Innocence, v2
by Moonshine
Summary: Elena and Reno in the backseat of a car. It's not what you think. The original Innocence Repents, rewritten almost two years later.


"There you were, with that look on your face,  
As if you never hurt--  
And I'm gonna be the one that pinches you, softly but surely,  
and you'll frown, and I'll know that I'm not dreaming...  
  
Oh god...you're still smiling..."  
-Eyes on Me (Obsession Remix)  
Her gun fell to the floor, and lay there among the carpet lint and spent casings. Across the room, a slowly stiffening corpse bled into the Wutaian rug. Night and stillness whispered around the room.  
  
Nobody moved; each Turk stood apart from his comrades and respected the deadened room with their silence. Tseng to Elena's left; one hand in his pocket, the other loosely holding a 10mm by his side, his hair neat as ever. Rude, standing just inside the doorframe, coolly straightening the cuff of a glove as he stood watch over the two inanimate bodyguards. Reno opposite Tseng, nightstick humming with unspent electricity. The room settled and sighed around them, their own private theme music fading away.  
  
Elena's hand, fingers still outstretched, slowly dropped to her side. She retrieved her gun and quietly walked over to where the late business mogul lay cooling on the floor. Taking a tissue from the box lying open on his desk, she laid it with an intimate gentleness over his face and walked out of the room with the same haunted silence.  
  
***  
  
They met again outside of Tseng's business car, a sleek black thing that glowed even in the shadows. Elena was perched on the trunk, propping her elbows on the back window and looking up at the stars.  
  
Tseng glided over to his vehicle with his usual detached manner. "I trust you continued with your mission after you left us, Elena," he admonished as he passed her on his way to the driver's seat.  
  
Elena looked down from the stars and slipped off the trunk. "Yes, sir. I encountered no one on my way out." She held up a manilla envelope, which Tseng relieved her of as he passed. Both entered the car without further discourse, leaving Rude and Reno to exchange puzzled glances and follow behind.  
  
Inside the car was the same feeling, an uneasy restlessness that hung in the air like a noxious gas. It continued even with the car in motion, the streetlights sliding over each of the comrades in turn, alternately illuminating them and leaving them in darkness. Reno set himself to looking out the window of the backseat, legs sprawled over a good bit of Elena's half.  
  
She looked down at his legs passively, and pushed them aside with the same absurd gentleness she exhibited earlier. Reno scowled, putting them back where they were. "D'ya mind? A fellow's trying to get comfortable here."  
  
"Sorry," she replied, unattached, and rested her elbows on her knees. Another beam of streetlight invaded the car and they both closed their eyes against it, and opened them again, and the steady hum of the tires accompanied their silence.  
  
Reno could almost felt sorry for her, looking so uncharacteristically vulnerable. "Look, me an' Rude are going out later to celebrate the fact we're not six feet under. You wanna tag along?"   
  
"...Not really."  
  
His mouth threatened to twist itself into a smirk, but he must have managed to squash the urge because the only response Reno had was to pull on one brilliant red fringe of hair and look away. He saw Rude in the front seat, sunglassed and unreadable reflected in the sideview mirror. Familiarity told him Rude was always listening, to everything, and friendship told him he was listening at that moment. And Tseng had said Reno'd never tried to form bonds of friendship within the team. It was the open defiance so bred into him that made him slide over the seat and sling an arm over his surrogate little sister. "What's wrong, 'lene?"  
  
Elena kept her face turned devoutly away from Reno, downcast. He felt her body stiffen. "I knew that man I we just killed."  
  
Reno raised his eyebrows. "No shit? Where from?"  
  
"He was the son of one of my father's business partners, back before I joined SOLDIER. He had just graduated from college when I last saw him." She sat back up and rested her head on the seat, using the redhead's arm for a neckrest. "We were close, I suppose. He was a bit of a family friend," she added softly, almost as an afterthought.  
  
This time Reno did smirk as a thought came to him, and bubbled out before he could stop it. "You wouldn't be so emotional if he was just 'a bit of a family friend'."  
  
Elena chuckled dryly. "Shut up, asshole." The insult fell short, ruined by the fact that her voice had begun to waver. "He didn't mean... anything to me." A niggling voice in the back of Reno's head was wailing about impending doom for uncaring bastards everywhere, but he pulled her closer anyway.  
  
Later on, of course, he would probably deny he did this.  
  
Elena stiffened again, noticing the change in Reno's behavior, checking at against her memories of him. It was several heartbeats and a traffic light before she relaxed again into the groove of his shoulder. "He was so kind to me. He always smiled at me, even though I was a decade younger."  
  
The downside of their current position, Reno noticed, was that he could now feel Elena's body trembling against his as she fought back the tears. He remembered tears.  
  
"I know," he said, "that that's not what has you like this. Right?"  
  
She finally looked at him at that, eyes holding a familiar sort of guilty madness. "When... I looked at him, to make sure he was dead... his eyes were open." She pressed her lips together and shut her eyes, chin shaking with the valiant attempt to keep the tears back. "He... he was still smiling. Reno... he was still smiling at me."  
  
At that moment he could honestly say that he didn't know how to reply. He pushed a lock of Elena's hair back from her face and she looked away, out the back window. The silence hardened the air again, and the car continued on its way.  
  
A couple hours later, a father found his son pale and lifeless on his office floor, and they were paid for it.  
  
~fin~ 


End file.
